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Circular Economy

Learn how to integrate circular economy thinking into current logistics processes to improve resource efficiency and reduce waste.

  • Duration

    2 weeks
  • Weekly study

    10 hours

Design circular supply chains, reducing resource usage and waste production

This course will introduce you to the concepts of linear and circular economies. You will understand how waste is being produced in supply chains and learn how to best treat it to reduce resource consumption and landfill disposal.

You will learn how to apply systems thinking to design products with a reusability and regeneration potential and how to adopt different processing technologies to optimise circularity in supply chains.

Lastly, you will learn how to re-evaluate existing supply chain processes and adopt circular economy principles to foster sustainable development.

What topics will you cover?

Week 1: The linear economy

  • Linear economy principles (make, use, dispose)
  • Waste management
  • Waste hierarchy (reduce, reuse, recycle, recover, dispose of)
  • Waste legislation
  • Energy from waste
  • Waste minimisation etc.

Week 2: The circular economy

  • Circular economy principles (make, use, recover, regenerate)
  • Systems thinking
  • Resource efficiency
  • Sharing economy
  • On-demand economy
  • Circular economy system diagram (reuse, repair, remanufacture, recycle, dispose)
  • Circular product design
  • Design guidelines etc.

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

  • Determine the basic characteristics of the linear and circular economies and critically assess the main environmental, economic and social drivers prompting to the adoption of circular principles in the context of supply chains
  • Explore the notion of waste hierarchy and the legal framework governing it in order to understand how to best optimise waste management actions and reduce the amount of waste generated across the supply chain
  • Demonstrate an advanced understanding of the ‘systems thinking’ approach in the recovery of value from waste and critically evaluate how its adoption can accelerate the shift from a linear to a circular economy
  • Recognise the importance of product design for a circular economy, examine the design features that support product reuse, repair, remanufacture and recycling and identify the changes that can impact product design in the future
  • Understand how the adoption of the sharing economy and on-demand economy models can help businesses to intensify and prolong the use of their products and reduce waste production
  • Develop a comprehensive understanding of the technological and engineering methods that can be used to recover energy and value from waste in accordance with the waste hierarchy principles and the systems thinking approach
  • Re-evaluate existing supply chain processes and implement circular economy innovations assessing their impact on the wider social, economic and environmental systems

Who is the course for?

This course will be of particular interest to those working or wishing to work in the manufacturing, logistics and recycling sectors and will provide them with the tools and the techniques needed to design lean supply chain and logistics systems.

Please note that the staff described in the ‘Who will you learn with?’ section below may be subject to change.

Who will you learn with?

A Chartered Transport Engineer specialised in sustainable waste management operations. Holder of a PhD in Green Logistics with 15 years of industrial and academic experience in the UK and abroad

Who developed the course?

Coventry University

Coventry secured 5 QS Stars for Teaching and Online Learning in the QS World University Ranking 2020 and has received No. 1 in the world for Massive Open Online Courses in MoocLab’s World University Ranking 2021.

  • Established

    1992
  • Location

    Coventry

Learning on FutureLearn

Your learning, your rules

  • Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
  • Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
  • Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores

Join a global classroom

  • Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
  • Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
  • Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others

Map your progress

  • As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
  • Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control

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